Daniel Kurtzer and Ariel Sharon light Hanukkah candles (Israel Government Press Office)

Daniel Kurtzer, who served as US Ambassador to Israel during George W. Bush’s first term, corrects the record on Israel’s settlements. The key factual takeaway is that what Obama is doing is actually seeking to achieve what’s always been American policy on this issue, not trying to get the Israelis to do anything they haven’t agreed to previously. He then goes on to poke holes in the “natural growth” concept:

The pattern of population growth in the territories actually undercuts the natural-growth argument. Since 1993, when Israel signed the Oslo Accords, Israel’s West Bank settler population has grown from 116,300 to 289,600. The numbers in East Jerusalem increased from 152,800 to more than 186,000. This goes far beyond the natural increase of families already living in the settlements. Inserting the provision of “natural growth” in official documents started with the 2001 Mitchell Report and the 2003 “road map,” reflecting recognition that the concept was being abused as a justification for expanding settlements. The Obama administration is pursuing policies that every administration since 1967 has articulated — that settlements jeopardize the possibility of achieving peace and thus settlement activity should stop. This does not diminish the Palestinians’ responsibilities, especially their commitment to stop violence and terrorism and uproot terrorist infrastructure. President Obama emphasized this in his Cairo speech. But Palestinian failures in no way justify Israeli failure to implement their road map commitments with respect to settlements and outposts. It is time for Israel to freeze all settlement activity and dismantle the unauthorized outposts.

The other thing I’ve heard from people is that it’s somehow logistically impossible to totally freeze settlement growth. Even if this were true, it would be a red herring—if the difference between the Obama administration and Netanyahu were really a technical logistical issue, you could work it out. What we’re seeing is a broad disagreement about policy. Obama wants peace and a two-state solution, Netanyahu has an approach that would preclude such a solution.

Meanwhile, it’s not true. Americans for Peace Now has a very useful document called “How to Freeze Settlements: A Layman’s Guide” that I would recommend to anyone who’s interested in exploring this issue in detail.

Chiang Kai-Shek (Library of Congress)

For several decades around the middle of the twentieth century, US policy toward China was heavily influenced by the “China lobby,” an amalgamation of evangelicals interested in Chinese missionary work, businessmen interested in the Chinese market, members of the Kuomintang political elite, and Cold War ultra-hawks who pushed the United States toward heavy alignment with the KMT and policies of brinksmanship with Communist China.

Robert Farley takes a look back at their heyday:

The language that the China Lobby used to preclude US rapproachment with China will be familiar to contemporary readers; China was a rogue state that could use its nuclear weapons randomly at any given time, and as such wasn’t fit for diplomacy. At one point, Chiang Kai Shek claimed knowledge of the location of the most important Chinese nuclear facilities, and suggested that he could take them out, if only the US would loosen the leash a bit. The PRC, it seemed, was full of atheist maniacs who didn’t believe that 72 virgins would be waiting for them when they died, and consequently could do ANYTHING. Lousy atheists. Anyway, strategic considerations (and sanity) precluded any meaningful unleashing of Chiang, but the influence of the Lobby in the executive branch and in Congress helped prevent a Sino-American dialogue over Vietnam, the final status of Korea, the role of the PRC at the UN, and the potential for collaboration with the Soviet Union. When any President hinted at acknowledging the PRC, the Lobby could arm Congressional opponents with money and righteous rhetoric about the dangers of appeasing Beijing. Nixon was able to break the cycle, in part because the most vocal China advocates came from within his own party, but also because of the shifting strategic situation of the early 1970s. Concern about increasing Soviet power and the need for a way out of Vietnam eventually overwhelmed the story that the Lobby was trying to sell.

At any rate, I don’t like arguments purely by analogy, but one point I try to make in my book is that while neoconservatism is a relatively new phenomenon, the basic ideas that undergirded the neocon foreign policy approach in the early 21st century have a long lineage in twentieth century American foreign policy. And it’s a lineage of pretty consistent wrongness. The main difference is that in the 20th century these impulses were usually either checked (no engagement with the PRC, but no “unleashing” of Chiang either) or else channeled into relatively unimportant developing world sideshows (Arbenz coup, assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the contra war). Under Bush, however, this approach came to be applied to the central areas of strategic concern for the United States with catastrophic results.

Relatedly, if you want to understand the intellectual decline of the Bush family, this weird anecdote about unleashing Chiang is priceless.

One of the puzzling things about the apparent electoral theft in Iran is that one of the major storylines of the Iranian election had been former president and current bigwig Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had earlier intervened in the campaign against Ahmedenijad. There had long been elements of tension between Ahmadenijad, a younger and more populist guy, and the old-line clerical establishment. Moussavi’s campaign, though reformist in its main thrust, also always clearly had one foot in the establishment and seemed to have some establishment support. Under the circumstances, the election theft looks like an about-face.

Brian Ulrich rounds up some different strands and speculates that what we may be looking at is a military coup that’s at least as much about consolidating the power of the Revolutionary Guards over the economy as it is about the establishment crushing the forces of reform.